21st October - The Vaults, Cambridge

Ms. Hammer and I headed to Cambridge on this evening to see Ben Goldacre, of Bad Science fame, talking on the subject of The Public Understanding of Risk . For free!

It was good. But even better was The Vaults - we decided to hang around for dinner, but not knowing Cambridge and having no map, we went for the "wander aimlessly into the dark and peer in windows" approach.

So how we ended up choosing somewhere with no windows, I have no idea.

The menu was outside the door and looked tempting - it was only on the way out that I saw the TopTable Gold award on the door.

There are some fairly steep stairs that open out into a bar area, with divided up dining areas - each area being in a Vaulted room. Geddit? For some reason it was re-named The Depot for a year or so, but it's not back to being called The Vaults.

There's a lovely ambience in this place, and despite there only being a couple of big groups and being sat cosily in a little cubbyhole of our own, the atmosphere was lovely.

Bit dark, mind.

The service was amazing and the food was DELICIOUS. We went for the tapas-style dishes (seemingly the main draw on a relatively simply menu) and a bottle of red.

The wine was lovely, as were our dishes - they recommend two to three per person, but even ravenous as we were, we struggled with five between the two of us.

We had - slow-roasted pork belly in some sort of fruity sweet-and-soury sauce (that's not what it said on the menu), Thai sticky rice with ginger and coriander, goats cheese tart, roasted mediterranean vegetables and, the piéce de resistance, wild pigeon and chorizo combined I-don't-know-how, but I want to eat that again and again and again.

Sadly we were overstuffed, but the dessert menu looked yum.

If you want to visit this little gem, you can find it at 14a Trinity Street, Cambridge CB2 1TB

Mm pigeons and pigs. On one plate.